A restaurant in Freedom, ME, has such a high demand for seating that it does not take reservations over the phone or online.
Instead, the owners ask potential customers to mail them a postcard if they want to eat there.
The Lost Kitchen is a 50-seat, farm-to-table restaurant housed inside a restored 1834 gristmill in a town with a population of 719. It serves dinner two days a week, from May through October.
Time magazine named the Lost Kitchen one of the world’s greatest places, and Bloomberg News dubbed it one of the 12 restaurants “worth traveling around the world to experience.”
When the restaurant received 10,000 phone calls over 24 hours after it opened its reservation window in 2017, owner Erin French and her husband, Michael Dutton, knew something had to change.
“The volume of requests was not workable,” Dutton said. “Erin wanted something much more personal, so she came up with the idea of a mail-in reservation system.”
The restaurant now requires would-be customers to mail postcards containing their contact information. The postcards are then randomly selected.
“We receive upwards of 65,000 postcards per year. It’s eye opening because people also share family recipes, jokes, tragedies. It’s a very grounding, humbling experience as we read them,” Dutton said.
Leigh Juskevice, a retail associate at the Freedom Post Office, sees the deluge of postcards firsthand.
“We’re located about a quarter-mile from the restaurant, and customers will pull in to take pictures of the Post Office all the time,” Juskevice said. “It’s kind of neat.”
She said restaurant employees have brought muffins to her, and they’ve even let her pick a winning postcard.
At the end of each dinner, restaurant employees place that night’s selected postcards on the counter for the customers to see on their way out.
“When they see their postcard, it’s an emotional moment,” Dutton said. “They never expected to see it again. They reconnect with it, knowing that the meal and the experience they just enjoyed began with that one artifact.”
The restaurant keeps every postcard it has ever received.
“It’s an honor to have them,” Dutton said. “You can’t help but be humbled.”
